


Classical Mechanics

by racketghost



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale has one speed: slow, Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Dom Drop, Domestic Bliss, First Time Bottoming, Good Omens Kink Meme, Heavenly Warrior Angst, Held Down, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Only Frances McDormand Can Judge Me, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Strength Kink, Strong Aziraphale (Good Omens), Top Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 09:10:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21241661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: Yes, angels were strong, but Crowley had never expected Aziraphale, guardian of the eastern gate and patron saint of good food and better wine, to be quitethisstrong.





	Classical Mechanics

**Author's Note:**

> Please look at the posting date of this story and understand that I, the author, recognize that there are errors in here. I wrote this a long time ago. Also understand that NO, I will NOT be correcting them or giving a shit about them. Do not leave me comments about the errors. I don’t care.

Crowley had always figured that angels were strong.

Or, at least, that they are not beholden to the fundamental interactions of physics— that things like gravity and laws of motion were merely suggestions to be encountered, considered, and ultimately ignored.

His angelic theory of non-relativity has been cemented into fact sometime over the course of watching Aziraphale attempt (poorly) to organize his shop.

First there had been the pallet of books donated from an old library that Aziraphale had slid easily across the parquet floor of the backroom. Crowley had attempted, later, while refilling his wine glass, to push it with his foot. It did not move.

Then there had been the bookshelf— solid mahogany, brass fittings, heavy glass on the bottom shelves— that Aziraphale had moved from one wall to the next, only bothering to remove his gabardine jacket when he feared the corners of the case would pull loose a button.

Yes, angels were strong, but Crowley had never expected Aziraphale, guardian of the eastern gate and patron saint of good food and better wine, to be quite _this_ strong.

The angel is standing on a ladder, balancing a box full of books on his hip as if they are weightless. _How had I ever missed it_? Crowley muses, a reclined letter S on Aziraphale’s couch, sinking into the cushions.

There is a glass of red wine in one hand and his head in the other, tilted as he watches the angel do some terrible attempt at cataloging.

“Do you need some help with that?” He asks from the couch, with no intention of helping at all.

“Oh,” Aziraphale turns to look at him as if he has forgotten he’s here, his glasses slipping down his nose, “oh no, dear boy. I’m quite alright.”

“You could just… miracle them into place,” Crowley says, gesturing with his wine glass, “might do a better job than whatever mess you’re making of things.”

Aziraphale fixes him with an unamused eye, “you know I actually _enjoy_ doing this. And if I do it myself I know precisely where everything is.”

“Mmhmm,” Crowley hums, taking a sip.

He has never quite been able to put a finger on _why_ he was so infatuated with the angel, despite many thousands of years of trying. He could wax poetic for hours about the things that drive him crazy however— the tartan _everything_, the insistence on doing things the human way, the inability to skip a meal without throwing a fit despite not _technically _needing to eat, his tragic misunderstanding of modern music and persistent labeling of The Velvet Underground as _bebop_.

Everyday there was a new episode of eye-rolling disbelief at _something_ the angel had said.

But when you really got down to brass tacks, Crowley supposes that all those little idiosyncrasies are precisely why he loves him in the first place.

And he does love him. More than he thought a demon had any right to love anything.

“Angel,” he says, the wine sloshing happily about in his belly, the room glowing warm at his edges, “can’t that wait until morning?”

Aziraphale is taking giant dusty tomes off the shelf, plopping them down into the box he is holding.

Crowley can see that the box is beginning to sag under the weight it is carrying, the bottom dipping in protest. But Aziraphale has it wedged under his arm so carelessly and so effortlessly you might assume it was empty were it not for the tips of hardback covers peeking out over the rim.

Crowley has always liked the idea of Aziraphale being strong, liked it in the way that he liked grandmothers carrying handguns, little girls carrying pepper spray. He liked knowing that if Hell ever came knocking on the door to the bookshop that Aziraphale, at least, could manhandle a demon or two.

_He could manhandle me too_, he thinks, and takes a long sip.

“I’d rather it not,” Aziraphale says, not looking up from his shelves and his notepad, his nub of a pencil, “there is so very much to do and,” he turns and looks at Crowley sprawling ever more bonelessly on his couch, “won’t you still be here by then?”

There is a hint of something in his voice. Something Aziraphale himself would probably categorize as _saucy_. Or rather, as close to such a thing as the angel was capable of.

Crowley can feel the beginning of a flush on the tips of his ears— it always happens, even now after months of… whatever this was between them, this incalculable gravity that held them together, since the averted near-end of the world.

He knows he is spending the night, Aziraphale knows it too— but six-thousand-years of repressing emotions led to certain ingrained behavior that he could not shake no matter how much time had passed.

For one thing, you never, _ever_ admitted that _yes_, you desperately want to spend the night.

“I might be,” he responds, trying not to look at the flex of muscle between Aziraphale’s shoulder blades, even under the absurdly numerous layers of clothing he wore, “or I might go home,” he threatens mildly, “catch up on some sleep.”

“You can sleep here. You’re always welcome to, you know that,” Aziraphale says absently, rolling up the sleeves on his shirt.

He is still wearing that damnable waistcoat, a pale button-up. His bow tie had been pulled off what seems like hours ago and flicked down to the end of the couch Crowley is sitting on. 

“I don’t quite fit on this couch,” Crowley observes, making a show of stretching, aware of how the motion pulls his shirt up, reveals a thin slit of pale skin.

Aziraphale glances over his shoulder at him, his eyes flicking down to that white-pale stretch of hip. He blinks, the tips of his ears turning pink.

“I do have a bed,” he starts, as if Crowley doesn’t know this, as if Crowley hasn’t fucked him into the center of it a dozen times already.

“You do,” Crowley agrees, “but I’d be cold. It’s _snowing_ outside, angel.”

“I have blankets,” Aziraphale says, his gaze flat and unreadable. He takes a long slow sip of his wine, finishing it, his head tilting back to reveal the pale column of his throat.

The soft bastard knows what he’s doing, knows that Crowley’s eyes are latched to that point of exposed skin, that his mouth is going dry— he knows it because he orchestrates it to happen, a perfect synchronized dance every night.

Crowley has half a mind of telling Aziraphale that he must’ve read too many of those terrible Regency-era romance books, for all their sexual trysts always begin with him playing coy.

“Angel,” Crowley says, sitting up suddenly, feet on the floor.

“Yes?”

“The box— I think—“

There is a tremendously loud bang as the bottom of the very cardboard and not very strong box finally gives up. The books, for the most part, have landed in an orderly, if still _loud_, stack on the floor by the ladder.

“Oh, bother,” Aziraphale says, still holding his glass. “It was barely full.”

“I think you mean _overflowing_.”

Aziraphale peers over his feet to the floor, to the neat stack of books.

“Your doing?” He asks.

Crowley snatches the discarded bow-tie from the arm of the couch and fiddles with it, shrugs a noncommittal shoulder.

“Crowley,” he sighs. “Thank you.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crowley mutters.

Aziraphale steps down the ladder, stands in front of the couch.

“I guess this means I won’t be finishing my cataloguing tonight,” he says, taking the bow tie from his hands.

Crowley looks up into a soft face, wide grey eyes.

“You won’t?”

Aziraphale kneels between his legs on the floor, reaches up and touches at the edges of his glasses, a question. Crowley pulls them off in answer, still uncertain of how the angel manages to look at him, all of him, the bruise-yellow split of his eyes.

“I won’t,” the angel breathes, suddenly very, _very_ close.

He still hasn’t quite gotten over what it feels like to kiss Aziraphale, how the feel of his lips always surprise him. Every time feels like the first, like that snow-drenched evening in December last year, Christmas lights strung up in every window in SoHo and the street lights painting the angel in flickering gold. He had no control over himself then and he has no control over himself now— his mouth opening at the first touch, teeth seeking out the purchase of lips to bite on, a tongue to dance with, hands cupping the edges of Aziraphale’s face as if he were something precious to behold, a cup to drink from.

Aziraphale pulls back, just slightly, not enough that their noses aren’t still touching, that the air between them isn’t still shared.

“Love you,” he whispers, to the cradled face, like it’s a secret.

And it is, Crowley thinks. It’s _their_ secret. That they kept from the world and from their superiors and even from each other for more time than they would ever care to admit. He has a hard time saying it, even now, and he isn’t sure if it’s from thousands of years of carefully _not_ saying it (of saying it through touches, through acts of service, through carefully placed glances and small miracles, saving books), or if it’s a failing of his demonic nature, an inability to speak the holiest of words.

“And I you,” he whispers back, knowing that Aziraphale knows it, can feel it, has felt it this whole time. He knows how Crowley wraps the word _love_ up in other words like a present, a gift to be unboxed.

“Perhaps we should move upstairs,” the angel whispers, but he’s looking at Crowley’s mouth again.

“I’ve heard you have a bed,” Crowley says, and kisses him.

* * *

Crowley isn’t sure exactly _how_ they made it up those winding back stairs. It is not as though their mouths ever really left each other, their hands ever stopped touching— even as they stepped clumsily over books stacked on the stair-steps— Aziraphale gasping out something about not kicking them and Crowley having barely enough mind not to fall down the steps let alone weave himself over obstacles on a goddamned staircase.

“You really,” he mutters into the angel’s mouth, hands fisting in that pale shirt, “shouldn’t keep things on the steps, mmph—“ his fingers are tugging at the buttons, frantic, desperately seeking skin, “fire-hazard,” he gasps out, half into Aziraphale’s mouth and the other half pressed into his cheek.

“Fire— what’re you—“ Aziraphale is sucking mindlessly on Crowley’s jaw, having migrated down from his lips, “_oh_,” he breathes, stops. He pulls back to look at him, worry etched into his face.

Crowley closes his eyes, “it’s fine,” he says, _“don’t stop_.”

_Don’t stop kissing me and don’t ever remind me what it felt like to come here and have you gone. Don’t remind me what this place smells like when it’s on fire, what heat does to the pages of books._

“But dearest—“

_Not when I have you here in my arms and my mouth, alive and warm and real and strong—_

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, stern, “get these fucking clothes _off_ already.”

His skin feels hot even to himself, burning either from Aziraphale or the wine or some heady combination of the two and he is not about to let some terrible memory of a building, _this _building, being on fire sully it.

“But you first,” Aziraphale says sweetly, always meeting Crowley’s sharpness with softness. The angel’s hands are too sure, too careful, lifting the shirt off the demon’s head as if he were unwrapping something delicate, something glass.

“Angel,” he grits out, “come on.”

“Patience is a—“

“Do not say virtue.”

He can feel himself leaking through his clothes, his cock strapped down against his leg, in these too-tight trousers. They feel glued to him like a second skin, hot and suffocating.

_Wish I could peel them off, peel me off with them, dissolve down and become the air you breathe._

Aziraphale, finally, gets to the button at his fly, but before he even bothers to unlatch it pushes Crowley back against the bed until his thighs kiss into it.

“Down,” the angel murmurs into his mouth, “please.”

The command sends a sharp stab of arousal through his veins, his heart hammering away in his chest.

_Anything you want._

Crowley sits obediently.

“Good,” Aziraphale murmurs, and kneels between his legs.

_How do I deserve to get you like this—_

It’s all too slow, too measured— Aziraphale’s hands unzipping his fly, tugging the denim down his thighs to stop below his knees.

“_Angel_,” he says, desperate, “touch me.”

Aziraphale just hums in response, his hands running up his thigh, thumbs pressing into pale skin. And then he’s in the angel’s hand, a warm mouth breathing at the tip of him.

He wants to spread his legs open but he can’t— trapped by the trousers around his calves, the hand gripping at his hip. And then Aziraphale’s mouth is on him, hot and soft and eager, swallowing him down to nearly the hilt, tongue rubbing against the underside. 

_Fuck._

“Angel, angel,” he pants, a litany, hands threading through the cotton-tuft hair, shoulders rolling in on themselves. Aziraphale’s tongue was doing that marvelous thing just under the tip of him, teasing.

“Angel, _oh fuck, don’t stop_.”

_Don’t ever stop touching me, loving me, let me stay in this for just a few seconds longer, let me live here where I can forget everything bad, remember everything good—_

That pale head between his legs will never be a sight he becomes accustomed to, will never not feel like some sort of fever dream. He cards his fingers through the white curls, marvels that it’s real, that this is really happening—

_Six-thousand years. Six-thousand years I’ve been burning for you and the fire is still hot, still raging, when will it ever burn out?_

“Angel.”

_Never, never, never. Tell me it will never._

“Bless this fucking—“ Crowley gasps, cupping the back of Aziraphale’s neck, “oral fixation you have,” he finishes, and closes his eyes at the way the angel’s throat closes around him in something that was not unlike a laugh.

Aziraphale pulls his mouth away, smiling, looking up at Crowley from the floor.

“Nh, angel— why—“

“Back up for me,” he says, softly, those watercolor grey eyes glassy in the low light, “on the bed.”

Crowley nods, pulling air unsteadily into his lungs.

_Just tell me, tell me, tell me what to do. Take the weight off of my shoulders. You are so strong can you carry it for me, carry all of me too?_

He watches, helpless, as Aziraphale undresses himself, the buttons on his shirt laying themselves open, his trousers dropping to the floor. He is flushed and breathless and _beautiful_ in this dim evening light, his cheeks pink, his eyes glowing.

Crowley stares up at him in disbelieving worship, somehow barely comprehending that this is actually happening, that he is in the center of the angel’s bed, watching him get undressed, as snow falls outside the window.

Aziraphale leans into him, straddling his waist and pushing Crowley back, flat onto the bed with a hand plastered to his chest— in that spot he always places it— right over his heart.

_It’s still there I promise. It only says your name— you never have to check, you can keep it, carve it out of my chest—_

Aziraphale is pressing kisses in his skin, walking them up the length of his body.

_It’s black and it’s ugly but it’s the only one I have._

The angel’s mouth is hot, unyielding, sucking biting kisses into his chest, his throat, his jaw. Crowley squirms under all of it, writhing up into the touch, his skin electric with wanting.

“Angel,” he says, “need you.”

Aziraphale bites at his lower lip in response, his hands pressing him down into the mattress.

Crowley can feel wetness on his belly and glances down between them to see Aziraphale leaking on his stomach. The sight pulls a moan up out of the center of him, his hips lifting, led by something outside of his brain, an instinct.

_What is this inhuman want? Do you feel this too? Does it also pull at your insides, twist you into someone you don’t recognize?_

“Want you,” he breathes, winding a hand through Aziraphale’s curls, his neck, seeking out any stretch of skin he can find. A hand finds his, weaves their fingers together in the dark of closed eyes, open mouths. And then the hand is lifting his away with a staggering lack of effort, pulling it above Crowley’s head and pinning it there.

“How do you want me?” The angel asks, leaning back to stare down into his eyes.

_All the ways it is possible to have you. Any way you’ll let me._

Crowley flexes up against the hand on his chest, the weight on his thighs, his wrist above his head.

“Can you?” He asks, breathless and flushed and lithe with vulnerability.

“Can I what, dear heart?” Aziraphale responds, the tip of their noses nearly touching.

His heart twists at the endearment, still not used to hearing it, not yet. He licks his lips, bites down on the bottom one with two sharp teeth.

Aziraphale is soft and kind and patient above him, knowing that Crowley has to search to find his words, that they don’t always come easily off his tongue, that his mind can be a wild, disorganized place.

_How do I tell you that I want you in the way that the Earth has the moon— that I need you with a force that holds planets together? How do I tell you that I need you to shut me up, sit me down, hold all of me together before I scatter into stardust? I’m a mess, a mess, a mess, a thousand things and nothing all rolled up in one._

It is a difficult thing, Crowley thinks, to measure the embarrassment of asking for what you want, what you _really_ want, against the pleasure of having it fulfilled.

_But you would never judge me, would you? Not you— never you. You have seen me at my worst—_

“Hold me down,” he says.

_Hold me down and let me feel what it’s like to be helpless, to not have a choice. I always pick the wrong one, the easy one, the one that gets me into trouble—_

“Of course,” Aziraphale murmurs, hand already moving to wrangle Crowley’s other wrist, pinning it with its brother.

“Not— not like usual. Really do it,” he sucks his bottom lip between his teeth again and bites down, “all of you. Don’t hold back.”

_Hold back anywhere but with me. Give me all of you, all of you, the bad and the good, the uncertain and the strange—_

“I want you to fuck me, angel,” he says, glancing up, and watches Aziraphale’s eyes go wide.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the angel whispers, his thumb tracing out tiny circles on the wrists above his head.

_As if you could hurt me—_

“You won’t. You couldn’t.”

Crowley’s hips are flexing, pressing up into the backs of Aziraphale’s thighs.

“I might,” Aziraphale says, the hand on his wrists loosening.

“No,” is Crowley’s clipped response, shaking his head, his hair fanning out on the sheets beneath him. “You _won’t. _Angel,” he says, looking him in the eye, “don’t make me beg.”

_I know you never would._

Aziraphale leans back, releasing his hands, the weight of him squarely over Crowley’s hips. There is something nervous and worried in his eyes, scared, perhaps. Crowley props up on his elbows, suddenly alarmed.

“What’s wrong?”

Aziraphale is staring down at his chest, his belly, anywhere but his eyes.

“If it ever hurts you’ll tell me to stop?”

Crowley nods, slowly.

“And… and if it goes too far or is too much you’ll say so?”

A shot of adrenaline snakes through his veins, and Crowley has a sudden thrilled realization that he _really _does not know what he has gotten himself into.

“Of course,” he says, staring wide eyed at the angel on his lap.

Aziraphale licks his lips.

“Okay,” he says, and his gaze flicks up to meet Crowley’s.

If his mouth goes abruptly dry and his heart is suddenly arrhythmic it has less to do with the words they are saying and more to do with that look in Aziraphale’s eyes— at the way the angel suddenly looks destructive and dangerous, a radiant ball of ethereal power wrapped in a corporeal body. Crowley is reminded, wildly, that Aziraphale, for all his softness and all his fondness for comfort, is also a _soldier_.

There are a pair of soft, manicured hands at his face, caressing his jaw, and Crowley leans into it, his eyes closing at the tenderness there—

And then he is pushed back down onto the mattress beneath him, a single hand on his chest, pining him to the bed.

He has felt Aziraphale’s hands on his chest before, on his hips, holding him down. But never like _this_. The strength in that single hand is startling, alarming, a thread of panic weaving through Crowley’s consciousness.

“You’ll be good for me?” Aziraphale murmurs, wiggling down into Crowley’s lap.

He bites off the moan coming out of his throat, his hips lifting of their own volition, seeking out their usual fare.

_I don’t know how to be good. But I can try. You can teach me._

“Always,” he says, breathless.

The hand on his chest slides up his breastbone to rest, briefly at his throat. The fingers squeeze slightly, index finger dancing at his jaw. Crowley has never quite understood the appeal of erotic asphyxiation, but under Aziraphale’s steady blue eyes and warm hand he thinks he might begin to.

_What a way to go_, he thinks, and then the angel’s mouth is on him again.

Crowley moans into it, distracted, barely registering that the angel has slid off his lap, that a warm hand is wedging under his back.

The mouth breaks off from his own and he cries out for it blindly, opening his eyes just in time to feel himself get rolled over, onto his belly, Aziraphale pressed into his side.

“Okay?” The angel breathes, and Crowley has just enough mind to nod, briefly, before hot kisses are being pressed down his spine. He has always liked being on his belly, some latent memory of earlier, simpler times— a snake in an apple tree, unburdened by human emotions or such things as legs.

Those legs which, damn them, are still locked together at the ankle by his trousers.

He kicks at them ineffectively.

“Shh,” Aziraphale scolds, a hand running down, over his flank, to quiet his movements.

“You wanted to be held down,” the angel murmurs, and Crowley moans into the mattress, thinking of Aziraphale’s penchant for pettiness, wondering if this is really such a good idea.

There is a hand running down the length of his spine, transforming into a single finger as it reaches the end. Crowley has half a mind to be embarrassed, pathetic as he is, bound by his ankles and pressed flat into a mattress, leveled by an angel.

_His_ angel, he thinks, as the finger finds its mark.

“Is this okay?” Aziraphale asks, tracing slow circles into his skin.

He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it isn’t this— this galvanized touch, his nerves juiced on vulnerability, skin singing under the angel’s hand.

_You should’ve done this to me first,_ he thinks, nodding eagerly into the mattress, _so I would’ve known how to make it good for you_.

He can hear Aziraphale voicing tiny moans, teasing his fingers back and forth. He shudders into a quivering pile of bones and skin, unwound by the exasperating slowness of it all.

And then Aziraphale is leaning over him, pressing hot kisses into his shoulder to distract him from the penetration, a bit of miracled wetness being rubbed there.

The sound he makes is absorbed by the mattress, the sheets beneath him, his hand coming up for something to bite into. Aziraphale is pushing a hand on his lower back, just above his hips, pressing him down into the bed with so much force that he can hear the springs creak in protest under him.

_Yes, yes, split me open, take me apart piece by piece. Organize the shelves of me._

“Angel,” he gasps, “_more_.”

He can’t see what the angel is doing but he can feel a hand moving, twisting, a second finger joining the first. His nerves light up at the burn of it all, the unbearable heat, his cock trapped between his body and bed, aching. He shifts his hips, back, forward, microscopic movements against the sheets, a maddeningly small amount of friction.

“No,” Aziraphale says, softly, the hand on his back shifting down to wrap around his hip bone, “no moving.” And then he _can’t_ move, his whole body stilled by the single hand on him, Aziraphale’s fingers still inside of him, pressing, searching—

They find what they’re looking for and Crowley cries out, his mind going curiously blank, incapable of doing anything against it— trapped under Aziraphale’s strength and bound by his own clothes. He brings his hand up to his mouth and bites down on the soft flesh near his thumb, eyes slamming closed.

“That’s good?” Aziraphale is murmuring softly, the hand on his hip gentling.

Crowley isn’t sure he is nodding, his body strung up on powerlessness and pleasure, every muscle quaking under Aziraphale’s hands.

“Good,” he gasps out finally, finding words, “_yes_.”

“Are you ready?” Aziraphale asks, sounding a bit uncertain, “for me?”

“_Fuck_,” he pants, “yes, Aziraphale, _please_.”

Crowley grinds down into the mattress as much as he can, desperately seeking friction.

He can feel Aziraphale behind him suddenly, the fingers inside of him disappearing. He whines at the loss of heat, the abrupt emptiness, and then releases an inarticulate noise as his hips are hefted up into the air.

A strong hand comes up to press between his shoulder blades, smoothing his face and chest back down into the mattress.

He feels undone, unwound, exposed to every inch of the air and the soft electric light in the room and somehow not caring— comforted knowing it’s just Aziraphale behind him; Aziraphale who has never judged this human body he inhabits or held any errant mischievous thought he’s had against him, Aziraphale who has loved him this whole time, even now, spread open on his bed and lacking any modicum of cool. 

“Angel,” he says, and if it sounds like a sob he knows that won’t be held against him either.

He can hear something wet and slippery being smoothed onto dry skin, and his heart begins pounding so hard that the other noises of the room fall away into nothing, replaced by the furious slamming of heart on ribcage.

A brief panic grips him, something animal and instinctive at knowing what comes next. 

There is the butting velvet hardness of Aziraphale behind him, at his entrance, and he bears down into the heat of it, panting into the mattress.

“Okay?” Aziraphale breaths, a hand on his hip, the other up on his ribs, feeling for his heartbeat.

He is beyond words, but that has never stopped them before— Aziraphale somehow adept at reading his nonverbal language, his animal tongue.

“I’ll go slow,” he whispers, and pushes into him.

It’s hot— so hot Crowley can barely breathe, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheek— he can not tell whether it’s just the heat of angel’s skin or the burn of his muscles stretching in a way they’ve never stretched before. He cries out wordlessly into the sheets, hands fisting in them, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“You’re so warm,” Aziraphale breathes, and Crowley latches onto the sound of the angel’s stuttered breath, the hitching respirations.

“So warm,” he repeats, and then stops, a hand petting down Crowley’s back, letting him get used to the sensation.

The angel’s hips are flushed to him, all the way inside, and Crowley swallows around the dryness in his throat, opening his eyes to stare at the wall in front of him.

“Angel,” he says, unsteady, “for the love of Christ _fucking move_.”

In hindsight, that had probably been a bad idea— because he is not prepared for the feeling of motion— of the electric drag of Aziraphale leaving his body, entering it again, the incensing slowness of it all.

Aziraphale pushes that hand between his shoulder blades again, an insect pined to a display board, the other hand holding him still at his hip.

“More,” he gasps out, trying to find air between the pressure of Aziraphale’s hands and the mattress, “faster.”

“No.”

“_Yes_.”

“I said _no_, Crowley,” he says, and stops moving.

Crowley is hovering somewhere on the edge of lucidness, panting shallow breaths high up in his throat, his body strung tight like a bow.

There are foreign, wordless noises in the room, and it takes him a moment to realize they’re coming _from him_.

“_Please_,” he says, trying to find air to speak.

It’s torture, held here on this edge of sensation, his body clamping down around an impossibly huge intrusion, his cock leaking in neglect.

There’s a weight over his hips, the press of a belly to his back. And then a hand comes down and laces their fingers together on the bed, the sheets twisting under their fingers.

“_Slow_,” Aziraphale says softly, somewhere near his ear, and starts moving again.

Crowley can think of nothing, nothing, besides the frightening, maddening pleasure of Aziraphale— the way it feels to be consumed by him— the angel was everywhere, everywhere, in his head and in his body, wrapped around his consciousness.

“Slow,” he says again, and Crowley can think only, wildly, of that time in his car all those years ago, the way the red lights of SoHo lit Aziraphale’s face as he said words that would haunt him for decades: _you go too fast for me_.

_Is this what you meant?_ He thinks, as his throat makes animal sounds into the sheets, Aziraphale a steady moving heat behind him, inside him, a dragging, voltaic pleasure.

He reaches to take a hold of himself, to relieve the raw neglected want between his legs, but the angel’s other hand intercepts the movement, stilling it.

“_Angel_,” he gasps, pressing his forehead into the sheets, “_please_.”

“You’re doing so well, love,” Aziraphale says behind him, breathless. “Let me do that for you.”

The words slake down his veins like fire, his mind blank. He can feel a gentle tugging on his hands, and then one is being released, a warm arm coming up to wrap around his chest instead.

He barely has enough mind to realize that he’s being lifted— as if he were weightless— pulled backwards onto Aziraphale’s thighs, gravity splitting him a little further open, his back pressed into the angel’s chest.

His head falls backwards onto the angel’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut.

“Oh, _fuck_,” he moans, to the ceiling, to the night air, to the snow falling outside, “_Aziraphale_.”

“Shh,” the angel soothes, lips next to his ear, “I’ve got you.” And then his hand is on his sex, pulling at the swollen flesh in slow, gentle strokes.

Crowley is choking, letting loose stunted subvocal sounds, strangled by the not-quite-enough pleasure, the impossibly slow burn of it all.

His ankles are still locked together, folded somewhere underneath of him, between Aziraphale’s knees. The angel is lifting him, lowering him— each movement stealing a bit of breath from his lungs— with the same slow, unbearable rhythm that has been Aziraphale’s speed in everything, all along, since the world began.

“Angel,” he gasps, eyes blowing wide.

“Yes, darling?” He answers, the rhythm unbroken.

He is held hostage in his own body— Aziraphale controlling the speed, the position, the placement of his own limbs. He feels a brief stab of panic at it all, at his lack of power, at his inability to move within the confines of the angel’s terrifying strength, at the frightening loss of control.

And then he hears Aziraphale’s quiet moan in his ear, the nuzzling of that turned-up nose into his neck, and he relaxes into it, his body going limp.

Pleasure licks down his spine at the surrender, his knees falling open as much as they’re able to, Aziraphale’s arm around his chest tightening. He turns his head to press wet kisses into the hand up by his shoulder, lathing at it mindlessly with his tongue.

“I’m close,” he whispers into wet skin.

“That’s good, darling,” Aziraphale says, pressing kisses into his neck, under his ear, “me too.”

Just the thought of Aziraphale finding his pleasure in him, in his body, is enough— enough for his mind to slip out away from him, eyes locked on the corner of the bedroom as his muscles contract, spasm, clench tightly down on the impossible hardness he is centered on, the electric buzzsaw of orgasm suspending him above his body. The edges of his world evaporate into nothing, until it’s just Aziraphale dividing him in two, holding the pieces together, pressing him so hard against his chest that he can feel the staccato rhythm of the angel’s heartbeat echoing in his ribcage, can feel the unyielding thrust of hipbones into muscle.

And then he can feel Aziraphale coming too— the sudden flood of warmth and wetness inside of him, an iron bar of heat and hardness, the angel moaning quietly into his neck.

He can’t move, not that he wants to— with Aziraphale still holding him tightly, his arms pinned down to his sides. There is a strange moment where he can finally hear the room again, the frantic pulse of heartbeat in his ear ebbing out like a tide.

“Angel,” he says, breathing heavily, his eyelids weighed down by an uncommon exhaustion. He must’ve been struggling, subconsciously at least, against Aziraphale’s strength. “_Wow_.”

Aziraphale is suspiciously quiet, breathing into his neck.

“Angel?” He asks, trying to see his face.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says quietly into his neck, “I’m so sorry.”

“_What_?”

Crowley turns in his arms, sliding out of his lap. He winces at the sudden emptiness, the slight soreness.

“What are you talking about?” He says, dipping a finger under that stubborn chin.

“I shouldn’t have done that to you,” Aziraphale says, looking down. Crowley pushes up, raises his head until the angel is looking at him.

“Done _what_? Had incredible consensual sex with me?” Crowley is trying to ignore the fact that he is leaking Aziraphale all over the sheets, “I _asked_ for this, angel.”

“I know,” Aziraphale puts his hand on Crowley’s wrist, pulls it down from his face.

“I’ve done this to _you_,” Crowley says, quietly, eyebrows knitting together, a sudden creeping doubt washing over him. “So many times,” he pauses, remembering just a few nights ago, Aziraphale’s legs wrapped around his hips, “do you not like it?”

Aziraphale looks up instantly, his eyes worried and wide.

“_No_, of course I do— I love it when you— When we—“ He trails off, shakes his head, “it’s not that. It’s just that you didn’t understand how… how—“

“Strong you are?” Crowley finishes.

“Not just that.”

Aziraphale pulls at the sheets until they are wrapped around his waist. Something in Crowley’s chest twists at the sight, that he would seek to hide his nakedness, now, after everything.

_Help me_, Crowley thinks, cursing his inept tongue, his inability to sculpt thoughts and feelings into words. He brushes a hand across Aziraphale’s cheek, his collarbones, lets it fall into his lap between them.

“Tell me,” he settles on, swallowing around the dryness in his throat.

“I… I—“ Aziraphale is breathing very heavily, looking down at his hands, “oh, _Crowley_,” he says, and lets his head fall into them.

“Angel, _angel. _Talk to me.”

He can feel himself panicking, can feel the way the blood quickens through his veins, the way the air becomes suddenly thick and hard to breathe. He reaches out, hesitant, and slides a hand out across the angel’s shoulders.

“Please talk to me,” he whispers.

Aziraphale lifts his head, finds Crowley’s eyes with his in the rapidly dimming room. He raises a hand and traces it along his eyebrow, his cheekbone, down to the jaw.

“I was so close to choosing Heaven,” he says, and the blue of his eyes nearly disappears under the dilating of his pupil, “I was _so close_.”

_I know_, he wants to say, but doesn’t. _I know you were._

He leans closer, winds his fingers up around the angel’s jaw, a thumb smudging at the wetness on his cheek.

“It’s ok,” he says instead, trying to ignore the heaving of his heart, the way his throat is trying to close off around his words.

“I spent… six-thousand _years_ thinking we were enemies,” Aziraphale says, closing his eyes.

“You were never my enemy,” Crowley says quietly. “Not once.”

There is more wetness under his thumb and he raises his other hand to cup his face, to smooth back the lines there. He knows what self-loathing looks like, can recognize it instantly, see the way it cross-hatches across a forehead, weighs down the corners of lips.

“I know. You were… better than me,” Aziraphale says, opening his eyes. “Always.”

Crowley is shaking his head before he even realizes it, “never, _never_. You were _loyal_ to Heaven, even if they didn’t deserve it. That’s not something to be ashamed of.”

“But you were loyal _to me_,” Aziraphale says, and something in the way he says it makes Crowley’s heart sink to the floor of his chest. “I should’ve listened to you.”

“Angel, it _doesn’t_ matter. Not anymore. It’s _over._” He swallows and drops his hands to find Aziraphale’s in the blankets, not understanding what any of this had to do with what they did in bed, with the way their bodies fit together in this particular alignment. 

Aziraphale is staring at him, something ageless and despondent in his pale eyes, squeezing his hand in both palms. It is quiet for a long moment, the snow on the city street dampening the noise of the outside world in quiet muffled contentedness.

“I would’ve won,” Aziraphale says finally, so quietly Crowley can barely hear it. “If we had gone to war, if I had met you out on the battlefield— _Crowley,_” he whispers, “I would’ve won.”

It is as if the air has gone out of the room, as if they are suspended in space, galaxies and light years between them, the whole of their celestial, ethereal bodies set in stark contrast to each other, on opposite ends of an infernal scale: Crowley, burnt and twisted, able to bend time, to summon hellfire, to skin-walk; and Aziraphale, blessed, pure, complete— capable of wielding weapons of God, of enduring willpower, of strength beyond measure. The scale tipped wholly in Aziraphale’s favor: the devil’s parlor tricks held little weight when your adversary could flatten you with a fist, crush your bones beneath their feet.

He has a sudden and acute understanding of Aziraphale’s anxieties, of the way they made him soft and dreamy, hesitant and uncertain, the way his touches were always measured, always careful, incapable of being cut loose. He thinks back to every moment they’ve touched, every moment of passion where they fumbled in the dark, Crowley believing that they were in it together— forgetting themselves— while Aziraphale carried with him the burden of his strength, the knowledge that in the struggle of Heaven and Hell that he would’ve been the victor, would’ve been the one to snuff out the love they had never been able to admit to. 

Crowley reaches out his other hand, cups his palms around the angel’s face.

“Angel,” he breathes, his eyes closing, their foreheads kissing, “I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Aziraphale grasps at his wrists and allows himself to cry silent tears into the tiny space between them, six-thousand years of worry bleeding out.

Crowley thinks of determinism versus reversibility, of the way things were supposed to be measured against the the way things are, of the benediction of _choice_.

Aziraphale chose him, maybe later than he would’ve liked, but chose him all the same, Heaven be damned. The burden of his love was heavier, he knew, the implications worse— Crowley had no where left to go but _out_, blown out like a candle, ceasing to exist. Aziraphale had a longer cliff to jump off of, higher stakes, a more painful landing.

Crowley presses his lips into the center of his forehead, etches the weight of his love there.

“We’re safe,” he says into the white curls, “you’re strong _for us_.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, pressing their noses together, “for us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/racketghost)
> 
> Comments make me happy <3
> 
> N.B.: in case you want some context: this story is a bit of a sequel to my other story called The Book of Ruth (which doesn’t operate well as a stand-alone, IMO. I was just dumb and made Strange Moons a series instead of chapters). Just thought I’d mention it if anyone wants some backstory!


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